Netgear sez: "don't use the public domain tulip driver"

Chris Worley cworley@altatech.com
Mon Sep 13 11:39:40 1999


Mattias Sandgren wrote:
> A remedy to my problems could be buying some accesible Netgear FA310TX which
> are based on a Lite-ON PNIC labeled "LC82C169C, 9916A, F3H26". As you can see,
> the card is not based on the 82C168 which people have reported a lot of
> problems with and they do not seem to be mentioned in the newest tulip driver
> (0.91g). I have simple question for the subscribers of this list (and Donald):
> 
> Will this card work with the tulip driver?

My guess is, NO!

I've used hundreds of Netgear cards with Linux, made the change from
21140 to PNIC without much trouble, but something new has happened...

The Netgear web page FAQ says:

>1.4 Does the FA310TX work with linux? 
>
>Yes, we have added linux support recently. The driver is included in version 4.0 or >higher driver set. This driver is available for download. It will work with all >versions of our
>FA310 network adapter card. If you have NIC has a version identifier D1 or higher >(printed on top right hand corner of the card), please make sure the driver on the >supplied driver disk is used instead of the public domain tulip driver.

Their driver is versioned ".89K", I believe.

Don once said not to use this driver, mostly because it had polling
loops in it (although, it looks like they've got the GPL back in the
code).

But, I just upgraded a network (windoze boxes with a Linux gateway) from
10BaseT to 100BaseT, all Netgear cards, and the windoze machines work
fine (i.e. ping each other without error), the Linux gateway acts like
the driver's not working (I've swapped cards, slots, cables, hubs, hub
ports without much change).

I've tried tulip.c revs .89H, .91, and .91G (I've yet to try Netgears
.89K or Don's new .91J++).  I've tried full and half duplex, and 100 and
10BaseT forced "option="'s (although the forced 10BaseT didn't seem to
work, according to the HUB LED's).

I'm running SuSE 5.3, kernel rev 2.0.35 (with some SuSE variants).  I've
got three other gateways running this exact same combination w/ netgear
tulip cards and no problems.

The Chip ID is: LC82C169C 9918A F3M24-1

/proc/pci reports the board as: LNE100TX rev 32

This makes this board older than most of the error reports I've seen
concerning Netgear cards in this group.

Other interesting info:

When I look at the ARP tables, I see all the machines on the network. 
No problem here (as others have reported with the 82C168C).

I'm using a D-Link DSH-5 "hub/switch".  This beast claims to be able to
store and forward 100 to 10BaseT packets; this actually works (I tested
it between windoze machines using 10 and 100baseT cards).  You can also
shut-down this mode, and go to a 100BaseT full-duplex mode.  The Linux
driver behaves the same in both modes.

I did get the driver working with a dumb 10BaseT hub.  I could not get
it working when plugged into either the D-Link DSH "hub/switch" or into
a Cisco DSL router.

The behavior, when plugged into the D-Link "hub/switch", is that most
packets don't get out.  But it looks like packets are being rec'd.  For
example, when I ping one of the windoze machines, a tcpdump thinks it's
xmitting packets, but I don't see all the replies.  Pinging from the
windoze machines to the Linux box sees all the packets coming in,
replies to them all, but the windoze machines only see a few of the
replies.

Setting promiscuous mode does seem to increase the number of xmitted
packets delivered (I don't know why, but I saw someone else in this
newsgroup say that helped, and I saw that too).

Reducing the MTU did not seem to help (I reset MTU via ifconfig after
the interface was up; I forget if that's okay with the Tulip driver).

Any ideas on a solution?

Since I use a lot of these cards, I'm assuming that I've just hit major
rev change, and probably need to be thinking about switching from
Netgear to another vendor (especially seeing some of the performance
problems some have encountered).

I've heard the "Addtron AEF-380TX-D" is a good buy for a good chipset
(the 21143 DEC/Intel chip).  Any other recommendations?

Thanks,

Chris